Swim Lessons

In the traditional model, therapy is the extracurricular activity of the young neurodiverse. What are we really trying to teach?

It’s six P.M. on a Tuesday. Lindsey is driving her kids to swim lessons as they laugh and share an iPad in the backseat. She’s thinking about birthday parties and grocery lists, concerned about screen time and recitals. She laughs, thinking how busy she’ll be this summer. “What will I do when the school bus stops coming?”

It’s six P.M. on a Tuesday. Sara just picked up her son from school after another difficult day. He wouldn’t eat his lunch again. She’s frustrated but has seen progress —he can sit through dinner now and tie his shoes. Sara knows he’ll need help for a long time and doesn’t know what to do. “What will I do when the school bus stops coming?”

In the traditional model, “therapy” in some form is the extracurricular activity of the neurodiverse. There are soccer moms and karate dads, but then there are occupational therapy moms and speech therapy dads. There are people who need to learn how to swim in water, and people who need to learn how to swim in life. How are we doing that, though? Ostensibly, we are trying to provide instruction that affords children with autism the ability to behave and communicate in the same expected fashion as their typically developing peers. One of many problems with that statement is the fact that we’re doing so in the face of their vastly different lived experiences and perceptions.